I have decided to start a series of posts where I’ll be documenting my progress as I develop and hopefully publish my first indie game.
These posts will probably be a mix of my thought process behind various design decisions, along with breakdowns of how I’ve gone about implementing each feature.
A game about sorting (thousands of) energy drinks
The premise of the game is quite simple: you’re inside a large gas station / convenience store, and thousands of differently branded energy drink cans are scattered across the floor. Your goal is to sort every single one of them, placing each can in the correct fridge.
The goal is similar to Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcade Library!, where the player has to pick up thousands of books and infer where each one belongs based on its title. In my game, the player instead has to infer where each can belongs based on its branding and visual identity.
For example, an extravagant can with a name along the lines of “CHUD 🦅 Ultra Liberty 🇺🇸 Zero Sugar” should probably go in a fridge belonging to the Patriotic aisle; while a softer, more neutral can called “👼🏻 My First Energy Drink 🍭”, lavender-flavoured, would obviously go in the Child-Friendly aisle 🙂 there’s an energy drink for everyone here.
As the player progresses, they can unlock and upgrade power-ups that assist with — or outright automate — parts of the sorting process: highlighting the correct fridges, automatically collecting similar cans, and so on.
What initially seems like an impossible, overwhelming task gradually becomes methodical. As the cans disappear and the floor begins to emerge, a final secret may reveal itself.